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2025 Empire State Report

Empire State Report

The 2025 Empire State Poll is a window into New Yorkers’ daily lives, needs and concerns related to labor and employment. The data is collected to help guide policymakers, legislators, unions, employers and advocates in understanding and addressing opportunities and challenges for workers, families and communities statewide.

An elderly couple go over their finances.
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Justice at Work: Belonging

See more justice at work and belonging

Report: Erie Co. Working Women Earn Less, And They Know It

Cornell Chronicle
Women working in Erie County simultaneously experience lower pay and more significant barriers to success relative to men, according to a new report released by the ILR Buffalo Co-Lab.
Gender wage gap
Report: Erie Co. Working Women Earn Less, And They Know It

DisabilityStatistics.org Offers Visualization and Local Data

For those who need data about disability, the revamped DisabilityStatistics.org website offers a wide range of information. A Feb. 26 webinar will introduce new data and features.
Screenshot of Disability Statistics Home page shows the tagline "Disability stats your way". It also shows an athlete doing a sqat. The athlete has a prosthetic leg.
DisabilityStatistics.org Offers Visualization and Local Data

Bill Erickson Has a Spreadsheet with 3.2 Million Rows

As lead researcher for the DisabilityStatistics.org website, Bill Erickson’s goal is to help people understand the numbers behind disability. In this Q&A, Bill shares how he does this and gives insight into his field.
Bill Erickson seated at a speaker’s table while giving a presentation. He is wearing a white button-up dress shirt with a red tie. He is seated in front of an American flag and behind a laptop, mic, and coffee cup.
Bill Erickson Has a Spreadsheet with 3.2 Million Rows

New York State: Economy, Policy, and Practice

See more stories about our work in New York State

As a New York land-grant college, we have a state mandate to apply our work in service to our local communities, state and regional economies, and partners in governance. We create and share knowledge, build relationships, and inform strategies aimed at improving economic well-being for all New Yorkers.

Coupling our strong physical foundations in Buffalo, Ithaca, and New York City with our rapidly expanding virtual presence in the COVID-19 era, our resources and infrastructure allow us to pursue local innovations that have global implications.

Federal Workers in New York State Collectively Earn More than $16 Billion Annually

A new interactive mapping tool released by Buffalo Co-lab and CAROW draws on data from the current (2019-23) U.S. Census Bureau Five-Year American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) to show concentrations of federal workers and federal workers’ purchasing power across NYS.
NYS map showing % of federal workers across the state
Federal Workers in New York State Collectively Earn More than $16 Billion Annually

New York’s Clean Energy Expansion Needs a Jolt

A forthcoming report and April 30th webinar by the Climate Jobs Institute lays out what’s working, what’s stalling, and how labor-forward climate policy can close the gap.
Two workers installing solar panels
New York’s Clean Energy Expansion Needs a Jolt

ILR School’s Impact on New York State

The NYS Public Impact report is a window into how ILR applied research, data shares, tools and training inform labor, economic and other issues at the heart of daily life for many of the state’s 20 million residents.
View of the statue of liberty with NYC skyline behind
ILR School’s Impact on New York State

A driving principle behind our research, teaching, training, and practice is that everyone deserves fair and equal access to jobs, housing, healthcare, and other means for achieving economic security. Our work seeks solutions that remove inequitable barriers to economic opportunities, whether those barriers occur within an individual workplace or at the structural levels of our political and economic systems.

You can see a handful of our recent work below.

Student Project: Applying for Unemployment Insurance (Video)

This video examines the unemployment insurance application and appeals process in New York. Including interviews with legal professionals and a former claimant, the video informs viewers on the steps of the UI application process, best practices when applying for UI and what to expect during the application and appeals process.
Applying for Unemployment Insurance: A Guide from Cornell ILR School and LawNY
Student Project: Applying for Unemployment Insurance (Video)

A Short History of Criminal Background Searches in Employment

Members of Cornell ILR School's Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative explain how the use of criminal background checks became a commonplace hiring practice in the US over time, bringing with it issues for job candidates as well as for employers and society at large.
Image of hands with a pen selecting something on a transparent screen with a person profile on it
A Short History of Criminal Background Searches in Employment

Health Care Cooperatives Could Hold Key to Easing Elderly Caregiver Shortage

Home care cooperatives may be the key to alleviating the shortage of paid caregivers for older Americans, according to a new study co-authored by Ariel Avgar, Ph.D. ’08, and Dr. Madeline Sterling, A&S ’08, director of ILR’s Initiative on Home Care Work.
Scheinman Institute team helping measure results of healthcare restructuring
Health Care Cooperatives Could Hold Key to Easing Elderly Caregiver Shortage

Collective Representation and Worker Voice

See more stories about collective representation workers' voices

We were founded to study and improve the world of work. We have strong research roots in labor relations and negotiations, and our work with varying communities comes from our commitment to understanding collective representation, the perspectives of workers, and improving workers' lives.

Worker Voice and AI in the Workplace

Researchers Virginia Doellgast, Ines Wagner, and Sean O’Brady found that works councils and unions in Germany and Norway were able to successfully negotiate the implementation of AI in their workplaces. Here we highlight some key findings unions, worker representatives, and policymakers can apply in other settings.
Photo of computer screen and headset with microphone
Worker Voice and AI in the Workplace

Policies Erode Benefits Gained by Marriage for Foreign-Born Individuals

According to new research by ILR Assistant Professor Tristan Ivory, intermarriage between foreign-born and native-born citizens provides clear labor market benefits for the foreign-born partner that change depending on the reception of immigrants in the host country.
An image of a man and woman's hands at a wedding ceremony. The woman's hands are covered in henna tattoos.
Policies Erode Benefits Gained by Marriage for Foreign-Born Individuals

Avgar, CAROW Awarded Grant to Document Home Care Worker Power

The ILR School and Weill Cornell Medicine have received a $300,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to administer a worker-focused survey of home health aides across the North and the South of the United States.
Ariel Avgar
Avgar, CAROW Awarded Grant to Document Home Care Worker Power

Leadership Development

We work with communities, organizations, departments and companies – all to help develop leaders who will make workplaces and employment itself better. Foundations in management and collective bargaining, and our 75 years in industry put us in a unique position to help develop leaders in business, labor and policy.

CAHRS

Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies

CAHRS is the world's leading partnership between industry and academia, devoted to global human resource management. The CAHRS partnership connects leading companies to Cornell University, the ILR School, and leading faculty, students and intellectual leaders throughout the world.

several towers from Cornell's Ithaca campus
Visit CAHRS

Labor Leadership Training

We work with union leaders at national and state levels to develop training programs for aspiring and established leaders within the labor field.

Explore labor leadership programs

Senior Leader Programs

We bring together world-class faculty with business and industry leaders to design and deliver training systems that develop HR, business and management leaders. Learn from world-class faculty dedicated to HR research and driving organizational performance.

Man leaning reflected against city glass door
Find out more about our senior leadership training

Jonathan Lam ’27 Honored by Amnesty International USA

ILR junior Jonathan Lam was recently named the inaugural recipient of the Trailblazer in Organizing and Activism Award given by Amnesty International USA.
 Jonathan Lam ’27 speaking at the People Power Awards ceremony during Amnesty International USA's Annual General Meeting, held in February at the Westin Book Cadillac in Detroit.
Jonathan Lam ’27 Honored by Amnesty International USA

What Are Trigger Laws?

Trigger laws are anticipatory laws that can be used to respond to changing conditions in real time. Megan Thorsfeldt and Gali Racabi from the ILR School explain how this type of law works and what it could mean in a labor context.
Image of law library with scales of justice emblem and a gavel in the foreground
What Are Trigger Laws?

Meeting The Moment

On January 30, Labor Leadership Initiatives hosted a virtual gathering for alumni of the National Leadership Initiative (NLLI). Participants came together to discuss how they are adapting their leadership strategies within unions and organizations to tackle the current challenges facing workers, especially as their protections remain vulnerable.
Stepping into Power ULI 2024. Labor Leadership Initiatives
Meeting The Moment

ILR in the News

Our work from the media

See more ILR news coverage

Trump wants to create manufacturing jobs. His tech allies invest in robots to do the work.

ABC News
“Automation is something we’ve seen for a long time,” said Philipp Kircher. “Whether it’s the companies that currently support the U.S. president or not, somebody would be doing this innovation, maybe slightly slower.”
Trump wants to create manufacturing jobs. His tech allies invest in robots to do the work.

BLS Ends Some PPI Data Collection. It Isn’t Expected to Affect Inflation Calculations.

Barron's
The biggest drivers of the proposed cuts are declining response rates and chronic underfunding of the agency, said ILR’s Erica Groshen
BLS Ends Some PPI Data Collection. It Isn’t Expected to Affect Inflation Calculations.

Is striking a new norm in healthcare industry?

Audacy
Local labor expert Art Wheaton says these strikes are becoming more common and have proven effective in many cases, but it's also risky.
Is striking a new norm in healthcare industry?